Tag: bebop

(left) Billy Eckstine’s band, about 1945; (right) Miles, Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan, 1949. Miles Davis is a name that still carries some weight outside jazz circles, and for folks of a certain age, he represents styles and raisons d’etre that transcend the limited cultural impact of improvised music. For those who actually remember Miles […]

New York City, while always the main mecca of jazz, enjoyed a period of full flower during World War II that will likely never be seen again in any genre or town. Prior to the war, jazz had been an uptown thing, flourishing in small, integrated Harlem clubs, segregated cabarets and black dance palaces like […]

Yesterday would have been Wardell Gray’s 92nd birthday. Why does that matter, and who the hell was he, you might ask? When I first started playing tenor saxophone back in the early 1970’s, I was oddly lucky to be turned on to Lester Young before almost any other saxophone players. Especially odd considering Young had […]

Dead Like Jazz is a rant about late, lamented twentieth-century musical forms: deceased, mostly American music that was vital--even essential--until all genres of it stopped evolving almost simultaneously in the the late 1970's and early 1980's. Rock & roll, rhythm and blues, country and blues are all represented here, but the greater emphasis is on jazz. If you read the posts, you may begin to understand why. Yep, it's all dead, but we celebrate it here daily!